He saw it instantly.
I dried off, put lotion on, and got dressed in galaxy pajamas, and he still hadn’t responded.
So I did.
You’ll owe me another photo if you don’t respond.
Still no response. I bit the skin of my thumb, sitting on the edge of the bath, waiting. Another minute passed and I sighed.
Maybe it was all a game.
Two hours later I was sliding into bed when I received a message.
Hot and cold glittered through my body. My veins sparked. My gut coiled.
He’d sent me a photo of my post, printed out. Only…it was wet. White spurts painted my body like frosting.
Holy shit.
He’d printed out my post andcomeon it. That was when I noticed he was holding the photo without gloves. His hands werebig.
And they werebloody.Bruised. Like he’d been punching someone.
After a moment, he sent another message, answering my question.
The kind you stay away from.
chapter
nine
SHAY
“You look tired,” Eames said when I got to work the next day. “Do you have insomnia again?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Just binge-reading too much.” It wasn’t technically a lie. He didn’t need to know I was binge-reading the same text, over and over again, strung out on a self-professed criminal.
Eames nodded and I shrugged into my seat, trying to use the universe as a distraction.
Failing.
Criminal.
What did that mean? Crimes ranged from jaywalking to mass murder.
Maybe he was a serial killer.
Once again, I knew I should block him. Instead, I opened the app and stared at the photo he’d sent. The longer I looked at it, the more I discovered. Like his fingers were long and thick, and veins spiraled on the back of his hand. I could somewhat make out he had tattoos, but shadow hid the definition.
The blood on his knuckles was bright. Fresh.
Maybe I should stay away from him. Maybe he was right.
I chewed my bottom lip.
What waswrongwith me that I liked it?
I worked up until about lunch, when my computer stalled again. I opened the task manager to force restart it, when I noticed an unknown program running in the background.
